This invention is directed towards commercial swine operations and more particularly to a process and formula for cleaning clogged recycle lines. Current industrial practice in the swine industry requires that the finishing floors, i.e., the enclosed pens where swine are housed for rapid weight gain, require periodic flushing three or four times a day. U.S. Pat. No. 5,062,387 issued to Anderson on Nov. 5, 1991, provides an example of an animal waste flushing apparatus and method and this publication is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. Typically, the flushing uses water from a lagoon pit or waste pond which is piped to the finishing floor. The run-off from the flushing is in turn discharged into the waste lagoon.
While solid waste materials tend to settle to the bottom of the lagoon pit, high levels of water soluble minerals and organic matter quickly build up in the lagoon. As this build-up accumulates, drain lines, recirculating lines and associated pumps rapidly accumulate scale and other mineral build-up which has proven difficult to remove.
Heretofore, people have used extremely caustic materials such as muriatic acid to clean and maintain the lines. Caustic acids are hazardous to workers, have slow reaction times, and are damaging to the pumps as well as the pipes. Mechanical routering of the pipes is also unsatisfactory since the abrasion shortens the useable life of the pipes. Therefore, there remains much room for improvement within the art.